Anti-pattern · Motion · High
Hover on Everything
Hover on everything is the blanket application of lift, scale and glow transitions to every card and row, so no hover state means anything.
The tell
Every card in a grid lifts or scales on hover, including ones that are not clickable.
Why it happens
Hover transitions are the cheapest way to make a static page feel interactive, so models apply them universally. They also survive screenshots well, which reinforces the pattern in training data.
The rule
Hover states only on interactive elements; containers get a background change at most.
- Remove hover motion from any element that is not a link or control.
- For clickable cards, change background or border only — no lift, no scale.
- Reserve transform motion for buttons and controls, at 120-200ms.
What is a Hover on Everything?
When every card lifts 4px on hover, hover stops being a signal and becomes wallpaper. Interaction feedback is a budget: it should be spent where hovering actually tells you something is actionable. Cards that are not links get no hover; rows that are get a background change, not a lift. Scale and lift belong to controls, not containers.
Paste this after your existing prompt to strip the pattern from the result.